05 Killing Cousins by Rett MacPherson

Author:Rett MacPherson
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
Published: 2002-01-03T06:00:00+00:00

Twenty-Three

I cleared the piles off my desk, which took at least fifteen minutes, and then sat down in my chair to read. Between my feet sat the box containing the original sheriff’s investigation reports. I pulled the stack out, sat it on my desk and began to read.

On the night of September 6, 1938, Byron Lee Finch was put to bed at seven-thirty in the evening. His mother rocked him to sleep, laid him in the crib and went back downstairs to attend to her company. At about ten-forty she checked on him and the other children and went to bed. She woke at about four in the morning after having a nightmare that Byron had been murdered, went to his bedroom and found him gone.

The people present and accounted for that night were Catherine, her husband Walter, and their other two children, Cecily and Aurora. Catherine’s sister Tamara Danvers and her two children, Hope and Hugh, had been over for dinner, along with Catherine’s brother, Louis Ward, his wife, Anna, and their two children, Patrick and Lanna. The ages of the children ranged from six to twelve.

So, Patrick Ward had been there the night that Byron disappeared, and now he had turned up dead in the rubble of the house where Byron was found more than half a century later.

There were two servants who were live-ins, and two business associates of Walter’s, who left before 8 P.M. on that night. So Byron was still in his bed when the business associates left for the night. Louis and Anna said that they left about nine-thirty. Tamara Danvers left at 10 P.M. However, the four cousins—Hope Danvers, Hugh Danvers, Patrick Ward and Lanna Ward—stayed for a sleep-over.

So, that meant that during the time between ten-forty, when Catherine last checked on Byron, and four in the morning, when she awoke from her nightmare to find him gone, the only people in the house were the two servants, the four cousins, Catherine, Walter, Cecily and Aurora.

The only other person with a key to the house was Sylvia Pershing.

Sylvia Pershing?

I read the report again. “Sylvia Pershing had a key to the house because she was Catherine Finch’s best friend. In case of an emergency, Sylvia was the one allowed into the house.” Those were the words written by Sheriff Kolbe.

I couldn’t quite wrap my mind around that. Sylvia knew all of this, obviously. Why hadn’t she said anything to me when she asked me to write the biography? Maybe she was waiting to see if I was a good enough researcher to find out on my own. The report went on to say that when Miss Pershing was interviewed, she stated that she was the first person to arrive at the Finch estate when it was discovered that the baby was missing.

My head hurt.

The report continued in the sort of stilted prose used in official forms that other people will read. It stated that the items Catherine found missing were the clothes Byron was wearing when he went to bed.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.